“I like it,” I said.
“What did you feel?”
“Sorry for the insurance man,” I said.
“Yes,” said Jeremy. “Yes.”
I told Jeremy what I needed. He listened, then asked if I really felt this was essential. I said it was and he agreed. I thanked him, hung up, and dialed Mrs. Plaut’s, wondering if I felt sorry for the insurance man for the same reason Jeremy did.
Mr. Hill answered the phone and told me that he had to be up in two hours to get to the post office and sort his mail. I told him I was sorry, that it was an emergency.
“Nice New Year’s party,” he said.
“Nice party,” I agreed, and he went to get Gunther.
“Toby?” asked Gunther in a voice coated with sleep.
“Gunther, I need a favor.”
I explained and he readily agreed to pick Dali up and take him to my room.
“Gwen had to go back to San Francisco for a few days,” he explained.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Just a few days,” he reminded me in his Swiss accent, which to too many people sounded suspiciously Germanic.
“I appreciate this, Gunther,” I said.
“I have not always appreciated Senor Dali’s insensitivities,” he said, “but I am intrigued by his art. It should be most interesting.”
“Thanks, Gunther,” I said and hung up.
I had one more call to make, but I wanted to think about it for a few seconds. The counter woman came back with the second cup of coffee.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Glad to,” she said. “Slow at night. Most nights. I’d close it up but my son, it’s his store. My husband and I take turns nights till Miles gets back from the war.”
“Army?”
“Marines,” she said with a big smile. I could see both pride and fear in it.
“It should be over soon,” I said.
“Admiral Halsey, Bull Halsey, says we’ll have the war won by 1943.”
“He should know,” I said.
“Commander of the South Pacific Force of the Pacific Fleet,” she said. “He should know. Want something to eat?”
“I don’t want you to …”
“I like the company,” she said brightly.
“Got cereal?”
“Just Wheatena left.”
“Sounds great.”
As she bustled back to the lunch counter, I dropped my next nickel and called the Wilshire District Police Station. I didn’t have to look up the number.
“Briggs?”
“Sergeant Briggs, right,” came the Irish-accented voice.
“This is Toby Peters. Someone just stole my gun.”
“Stole your gun,” he said flatly. “You got a story to go with this? Some bullshit. Things are slow here and I could use a tale or two.”
“Someone broke in my car, took it out of my glove compartment. I’m reporting it. I was parked on Santa Monica near La Cienega. Happened about four hours ago. I just noticed it when I went to lock it up at home.”
“Maybe the Japs took it. Or those Fifth Col-youmnists.”
“Could be. You want the serial number? I’ve got it right-”
“I’ll get it off the records,” he said. “But you’ve got to come in and fill out the papers. You know.”
“Can it wait till morning, late?”
“Why not?” said Briggs. “I’ll have the blotter report on your brother’s desk when he comes in. He likes a good read with his first cup.”
“Thanks, Briggs,” I said and hung up.
My guess was that the.38 I’d thrown on Adam Place’s bed was already on the desk of a cop in Culver City. I had the Wheatena and talked to the counter woman, whose name was Rose. I’d read her wrong. She wasn’t simple and she wasn’t waiting for Jesus. She was waiting for Miles Anthony McCullough, waiting for someone to show photographs of her grandchildren to. I ate my Wheatena and looked at the kids. They were all cute and they all looked like Rose McCullough.
8
The coffee kept me awake till I hit Mrs. Plaut’s boarding house. I had trouble parking on Heliotrope, even with a car the size of my Crosley, but I managed to squeak into a space about two blocks away. The night light was on. I made it up to my room, kicked off my shoes, unzipped my windbreaker and placed it on one of my two kitchen chairs. My pants went on the other. My shirt had been through a tough day so, reluctant as I was, I retired it till I could find the time to wash it. My retired shirts made a small pile in the closet.
I checked the time on my Beech-Nut Gum wall clock and lay down on the mattress on the floor. I’d shave in the morning. I’d brush my teeth in the morning. I’d change my underwear in the morning. I’d become a better person in the morning. Right now I’d just lie there with the lights on and wait for Gunther to get back with Dali. That was my plan.
What was it the insurance man had said in Jeremy’s poem? “It’s nothing, just a shooting star.” I closed my eyes and saw the shooting star. Was I an insurance salesman or a poet at the window? I was asleep before I could think of an answer.
I dreamed of stone women crumbling in the sand, of mustaches without faces, of derby hats floating, eggs opening with something coming out that I didn’t want to see, of Gala’s clocks melting on Rose McCullough’s grill at the Victory Drugstore. Koko the Clown kept popping up from behind rocks and through holes in screaming birds. He grinned but refused to play a major role in the dreams.
When I opened my eyes, Dash the cat was sitting on my chest and Gunther Wherthman, hair neatly trimmed, in three-piece suit complete with pocket watch and chain and black shoes polished to look like glass, was sitting on the sofa. He had a fat leather briefcase in his lap.
“You were asleep when we came in,” he said.
I scratched Dash’s head, eased him away, sat up and tried to rejoin the ranks of the living. It was no use. I lay back down and took a shot at focusing on Mrs. Plaut’s pillow on the sofa, the pillow that had “God Bless Us Every One,” neatly embroidered on it in red.
“I have fed the cat,” Gunther said, handing me the briefcase and an envelope. I put the briefcase on the floor next to the bed, and tore off the end of the envelope. Five hundred-dollar bills drifted into my lap.
This held little interest for Gunther.
“Dali brought with him a rolled-up painting he says someone killed. It’s in my room. Toby, I spoke to him in both French and Spanish and find difficulty understanding him in either.”
“Where is he, Dali?” I asked.
“Downstairs, talking to Mrs. Plaut.”
“Shit,” I said, forcing myself up. “Where did he sleep?”
“He did not sleep. He says he takes little naps during the day. It gives him more dreams to work from.”
“He can have some of mine,” I said, looking around for my pants and, after several false starts, remembering they were draped over one of my two kitchen chairs. I shoved the five hundreds into a front pocket and struggled into the pants, while Gunther told me that Mrs. Plaut had invited us all to breakfast.
“That is why I had to wake you,” Gunther explained. “She insisted that you be down for breakfast quickly.”
I grabbed one of my not-too-frayed shirts from the closet and blundered my way out of the room and toward the bathroom, listening for voices and hearing none outside one inside my head I didn’t want to hear.
“I’ll be right down, Gunther,” I said. “And thanks for-”
“No,” he said as I leaned against the bathroom door. “I owe you much more than I am able to give. I am pleased that you continue to feel that you can both call upon and rely upon me in moments of crisis.”
And that I could. Gunther went down the stairs and I moved to the mirror. I had saved Gunther’s life once, a couple of years back. He’d been accused of murder and was close to going up for it. I had blundered into the real killer the way I’d just blundered into the bathroom, and Gunther and I had been friends and next door neighbors ever since. He had gotten me the room in Mrs. Plaut’s and for that I was forever perplexed.
I shaved without committing suicide, brushed my teeth by borrowing some of Mr. Hill’s Dr. Lyon’s Tooth Powder, ran my fingers through my hair and put on my shirt. The face in the mirror looked presentable: nose flat, face baked by the sun, black-graying hair with gray sideburns a little long and in need of a cut. The movies didn’t want me to star, but people sometimes needed someone who looked like me, sold his loyalty at a reasonable price, was willing to take a fall or two, could keep secrets large and small, and didn’t give up on a client-although Dali had sorely tried me on that one. I went back to my room, grabbed the briefcase, checked the bills in my pocket, and hurried downstairs to find my client.